Policy Work

Public Policy Research and Advocacy Chinatown CDC advocates for policy reform that fulfills our mission of building healthy affordable communities. Our policy efforts address issues of tenant rights, land use reform, planning, affordable housing, and budget issues at the local, regional, state, and federal levels.

We also work with partners at each of these levels, including the Council of Community Housing Organizations (CCHO), San Francisco Anti-Displacement Coalition (SFADC), and Chinatown Coalition for Housing Justice (CCHJ) on the local and regional level, and the Coalition of National Asian Pacific Americans for Community Development (CAPACD) on the state and federal levels.

Preservation and Rehabilitation of Neighborhood Assets Chinatown CDC’s primary policy advocacy focuses on preserving and rehabilitating neighborhood assets for the benefit of low-income residents. We advocate for policy reform such as tenant rights legislation to help low income tenants avoid eviction. We also advocate for affordable housing finance and land use reform that promotes the improvement of building health and safety and secures affordability for residential and commercial users for generations to come.

Building and Preserving Sustainable Communities for Low-Income Residents Like other core low income neighborhoods, Chinatown already embodies many principals of sustainability – livability, walkability, public transit reliance, and most of all accessibility for low-income immigrant residents and businesses. But Chinatown faces significant and increasing gentrification pressures as the city and region move towards a sustainable community model that aims to curb suburban sprawl by concentrating population growth around “transit-oriented development” in core cities like San Francisco.

Chinatown CDC advocates for sustainable communities that are accessible to low-income residents and neighborhood-serving retail. Thus we partner with a number of local and regional advocates to ensure inclusion of a low-income neighborhood-level perspective in the regional and national sustainable communities dialogue.